Amarcord

by Marcella Hazan (Gotham; $27.50)

Born in Cesenatico, a fishing village near Rimini, in 1931, Hazan married the son of a New York furrier and began cooking for him. Soon, she was giving classes in her Manhattan kitchen, and when Craig Claiborne came to lunch and wrote her up in the Times Hazan was on the map. The city of Bologna built her a kitchen, and she led celebrated cooking classes in Venice. With her husband as translator, Hazan wrote “The Classic Italian Cookbook” (among others), though her publishing adventures were fraught. In this memoir, she does not have the advantage that Julia Child did, of having a voice so familiar that we hear every sentence in her inimitable delivery, but she comes through now and then: “I soon discovered a natural inclination for frying.” ♦

Mary Norris began working at The New Yorker in 1978, and has been a query proofreader at the magazine since 1993. Her book, “Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen” (Norton), is now available in paperback.